Reaching the century mark

February 12, 2009

High scoring games are not the norm in the Eastern South Dakota Conference but the Brookings and Pierre boys? basketball teams combined to score 192 points last Friday. Brookings posted a 102-90 win over the home Pierre team. It didn't really have to do with the shot clock, said Brookings coach Travis Engebretson. It had to do with the way Pierre is playing basketball of late which is trying to force the ball up the court. We shot 65 percent from the floor, made 10 three-pointers and they made 16. There were a lot of possessions. They took 73 shots and we took 59. According to Engebretson, a Brookings basketball team in 1968 or 1969 also went over the 100-point mark. Pierre wanted to run and gun and get down the floor. There weren?t a lot of layups. It was perimeter shooting. We shot extremely well. Most of our points were in the half-court offense. It was contagious. We had a bunch of kids knocking down shots, said Engebretson. The Bobcats' leading scorer Brayden Carlson poured in 34 points to go along with 23 points by Ryan McCutcheon who came off the bench. Patrick Coughlin added 14 and Brett Rasmussen had 13. Pierre was led by Curry Kuehl with 20, Kyle Cichos with 16 and Bryce Drapeaux with 12. Brookings scored 32 points in the second quarter and 31 in the third. Pierre put 35 points on the board in the fourth quarter as the two teams totaled 58 points in the last eight minutes of the game. With about two minutes left we were up by 22 when we subbed, said Engebretson. When we had 96 points I looked at our kids on the bench and said, Are you ready? They said, No. They wanted us to get to 100 and they thought that might not happen if they went in too soon.? Bycredit Sports writer Deb Smith